Biography
Composer Kevin Puts earned the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2012 with his first opera, Silent Night, and he has collected numerous additional major composition awards while maintaining a distinguished career as a teacher.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he spent his childhood in Alma, Michigan, before pursuing studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and at Yale University; he completed his D.M.A. at Eastman. Among his composition instructors were Jacob Druckman, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner, while Nelita True guided his piano work. He participated in further studies at the Tanglewood Music Festival under William Bolcom and Bernard Rands. Between 1996 and 1998 he held the Composer-in-Residence post with Young Concert Artists, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2002; he also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Composition Prize. His academic appointments began at the University of Texas, where he taught from 1999 until 2005, after which he joined the faculty of Baltimore’s Peabody Institute.
Major commissions arrived in the late 1990s, among them Concerto for Everyone for the New York Youth Symphony and Symphony No. 1 for the California Symphony, both introduced in 1999. Subsequent early works included This Noble Company, first performed by the Atlanta Symphony in 2003, and River’s Rush, given by the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin in 2004 during the ensemble’s 125th-anniversary season. In the late 2000s he served as composer-in-residence with the Fort Worth Symphony, writing a violin concerto for concertmaster Michael Shih that the orchestra later recorded. Additional concertos comprise one for piano commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and one for clarinet, together with several pieces for wind band; his cello concerto received its premiere from Yo-Yo Ma. Silent Night, widely regarded as his most prominent score, draws on the 1914 Christmas Truce of World War I; the Minnesota Opera presented the premiere in 2011, after which numerous leading companies in the United States and abroad staged the work. His later operas are The Manchurian Candidate (2015), Elizabeth Cree (2017), and The Hours (2022). Fresh commissions have continued to arrive from ensembles such as the National Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, and Ensemble Kobe. By the early 2020s roughly thirty of his compositions had appeared on recordings.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he spent his childhood in Alma, Michigan, before pursuing studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and at Yale University; he completed his D.M.A. at Eastman. Among his composition instructors were Jacob Druckman, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner, while Nelita True guided his piano work. He participated in further studies at the Tanglewood Music Festival under William Bolcom and Bernard Rands. Between 1996 and 1998 he held the Composer-in-Residence post with Young Concert Artists, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2002; he also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Composition Prize. His academic appointments began at the University of Texas, where he taught from 1999 until 2005, after which he joined the faculty of Baltimore’s Peabody Institute.
Major commissions arrived in the late 1990s, among them Concerto for Everyone for the New York Youth Symphony and Symphony No. 1 for the California Symphony, both introduced in 1999. Subsequent early works included This Noble Company, first performed by the Atlanta Symphony in 2003, and River’s Rush, given by the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin in 2004 during the ensemble’s 125th-anniversary season. In the late 2000s he served as composer-in-residence with the Fort Worth Symphony, writing a violin concerto for concertmaster Michael Shih that the orchestra later recorded. Additional concertos comprise one for piano commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and one for clarinet, together with several pieces for wind band; his cello concerto received its premiere from Yo-Yo Ma. Silent Night, widely regarded as his most prominent score, draws on the 1914 Christmas Truce of World War I; the Minnesota Opera presented the premiere in 2011, after which numerous leading companies in the United States and abroad staged the work. His later operas are The Manchurian Candidate (2015), Elizabeth Cree (2017), and The Hours (2022). Fresh commissions have continued to arrive from ensembles such as the National Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, and Ensemble Kobe. By the early 2020s roughly thirty of his compositions had appeared on recordings.